I feel like the worse Mama Chicken ever. I left my flock unattended when dh and I went out for dinner last night, as the babes generally march themselves to roost and we simply say goodnight and close the door. When we came back at around 10pm, Polly, our RR, was laying in the driveway. I almost ran her over! I tearfully scooped her up and frantically searched around for her attacker. When we arrived at the coop, we were missing one of our black sexlinks, loads of red and black feather everywhere, and Pudge, our big fat red sexlink was wobbling on her little chicken feet.

I put Polly on her roost and carried pudge to the house where it was discovered that her eye and what I think is her earlobe was severely swollen. Her third eyelid is almost too swollen to even close. After a rather pathetic cry and profuse apologizing, I tucked her into the nesting box for the night.

Anyhoo, this morning, her eye was pussed. I gently wiped the pus away with a warm washcloth and Neosporined it before tucking her into a tote filled with a bed of straw. However, within 10 minutes or so of each cleaning/medicating, the eye is already gooed again! It's clear and yellow and has no odor. It seems to me like 24 hours would not be long enough for such a severely pusy infection to brew. Is this pus, or is it normal injury drainage?

She is eating a bit of food (I mixed in some chick started with her usual pellets), and I got her to take a drop or two of water from a spoon, but she is very sleepy looking (lots of drifting off) and her comb is a red-pink instead of a rich dark red like usual.

Do you think this is infected or just injured? Does it sound like the jelly-like fluid is pus? Any help is much appreciated!

Keep doing what you're doing for the eye.
Search for other wounds and clean them with Betadine. Then put some campho-phenique on the wounds. Crush a baby aspirin and mix with a little water to give them.
A shot of penicillin for a few days wouldn't hurt either.

After giving it some thought (and her fussing over me trying to put a cool compress on her peeper), I decide to place her outside with the other three from her original flock for comfort. Lo and behold, the rest in the tote must have been what she needed, because she immediately squatted, moved her bowels, bellied up the bar at the water bowl and slurped for a good long minute, and began blindly pecking the grass.

She can't seem to figure out how far away anything is, so it takes her several attempts to snap up some grass.

Also, she has slowly (and unsteadily) mosied up to the coop and hopped in. Considering she's our best layer, she probably has been holding her egg all morning! I will certainly be watching her eye closely and cleaning it several times a day, and may invest in some pen.

There's too much resistance to penicillin these days. The antibiotics listed there are what are recommended for animal attacks. Try to get something quickly as animal attack victims might seem OK but then they crash on the 3rd day.

She is still mobile, walking around (bumping into things) and happily munching grass. I did close her into the run with food and water in easy reach with the younger chickens for a rest. Also, our friend Mrs. Goshawk is touring the neighborhood.